


I’m not bitter (I’m just tired)

by jonsrightrib (sotakeabitofcalpol)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Author Projecting onto Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Character Study, Gen, I don't even think there are trigger warnings for once, jonathan sims' canonically terrible childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27656977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sotakeabitofcalpol/pseuds/jonsrightrib
Summary: Her tomatoes plants are dying again. Flooded this year, from the rain. He just watches.aka brief musings from a teenage Jon on rain, tomato plants and his grandmother
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	I’m not bitter (I’m just tired)

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about Jon’s childhood so here, have a self indulgent fic full of hc.
> 
> Minor warnings for emotional neglect (maybe), referenced canonical character death (Jon’s parents) and the specific brand of hatred adults show towards ‘strange’ children

This, Jon muses, is not what the weather forecast had predicted. The voice on the radio, typical BBC southern middle class accent, had forecast 24 and sunny, neglecting to mention the downpour that erupted as he was released from school. He hadn't bothered running to escape it; as much as he'll complain about it, he likes the rain, likes the way it beats against his window and breaks the silence of the house. The complaining is more a matter of principle, pretty much a habit, that and the fact his blazer will be crispy tomorrow, dried into a solid shape, sediment and whatever from the impurities in the rainwater rolling between his socks and the bottom of his shoe. He doesn't like to think about what that grit means about the purity of rainwater. He doesn't want to do his homework either, though, so he jams the desk chair up against his door and takes up a spot next to his window.

Her garden stares back at him through rain-blurred glass, a pathetic scrub of grass splattered with broken paving slabs in what might have been intended as a path, but had ended up like a warped hopscotch course. The water just sits on the slabs, sliding off and pooling on the saturated earth where they lie at odd angles, and he knows that when this is over, he'll have to wear shoes when he goes out for air, because the damp clings to them in precisely the way that feels horrendous on socked feet.

Not that the air is anything special outside. The mingling of faint pollution and sea salt, the ever-present layer of sediment laying across the garden like dust across the top shelves in the classroom, bags of soil from the garden centre that have been open too long. Four garden chairs from the same set, around a sun-bleached and crumbling wooden table. The chairs are brittle plastic, coated in the green material that grows on things when they're left in the damp. He stares at them, trying to ignore the implications of a better future that never came, the implication that he can never escape. Only two of the chairs are ever used, and it shows in the scuff marks at the bottom of the legs, scraping away the thin layer of moss; two chairs abandoned to time and the awkward way the shin-high brick wall cuts diagonally across the patio and make it impossible to drag them out to sit in.

It's definitely going to kill her tomatoes, if the rain carries on much longer. He keeps half a disinterested eye on the water level as the pot floods. Her tomatoes never grow; the plant dies every year, whether it be flooding or drought or the neighbour's cat knocking the pot over again. He'd tried to make a point about it when they failed last year, about Einstein's definition of insanity, but she'd fixed him with that glare that meant he was on thin ice. He'd dug his nails into his palm to shut himself up before either of them got too angry. It hadn't worked. Years later, Martin asks in a fit of bitterness whether he knows how someone washes the dishes angrily, and Jon doesn't tell him he knows it intimately.

She never hits him at least, never shouts at him. She tells him he needs to control his outbursts, stop fidgeting, not talk back. She doesn't even tell him that, half the time. She doesn't really hug him either, though. She says _I love you_ and he says _I love you too_ and it carries about as much value as a paper napkin, as the words _sorry_ or _fine_. Plastic words for the plastic pot of the fucking tomatoes that he suddenly wants to tear into pieces in a way that will make any of this real. His grandmother is in the kitchen humming to a song she won't accept he doesn't like. The sofa downstairs is older than him by sixteen years, long past fraying at the seams and his jumper sleeves have been stretched past his knuckles by a year of tugging. The rain is still pounding against the windows.

His grandmother calls him to the table, and pushes over a cup of tea that's too weak for his tastes and a plate of Edam sandwiches. He takes a bite. It tastes like it always does, of very little except margarine and mildly stale bread that sticks to the roof of his mouth like cinnamon. At least cinnamon had tasted of something, when he'd tried to eat it. It's been a few weeks since he last managed to smuggle something into his room he can eat when the lack of sugar makes him go light-headed, so he tries to choke it down without seeming ungrateful.

The TV in the corner isn't on now, but Jon knows with certainty what will happen later when it is on; he'll watch Eggheads, do well in the way that will either make pride flash across his grandmothers face for a cherished half-second, or put a look in her eye like she's seen a ghost. Then, he'll go upstairs and stare at his homework until the words blur together, and they won't become words again until his grandmother goes to bed and he suddenly realises how tired he is and how much work he has left to do tonight and does it all in one blast.

Next door has a girl a year older than him, with a swing in their garden that he wishes was down the end of his, so he could sit and soak in the rain without having to go near the chairs or paving slabs. He could sit on his windowsill, if he really wanted, but it'd be uncomfy despite the fact he's the smallest in his year, and he might look weirder to everyone than he already is. Those reasons, and the fact that he misses being able to go on that swing; he can easily get to the park, although his grandmother might actually yell this time, but he hasn't been on someone's garden swing in a long time. In fact, he hasn't been to anybody else's house in years, not since he stopped being a _sweet boy who lost his parents, so tragic_ and became a _strange, angry, unlikable child,_ as Masie's mum had put it, in a voice that carried through the library. His parents' death doesn't make him sad or kind like everyone seems to think it should, so she's right that he's strange. The words still felt unfair, though, _feel_ unfair. He knows he's ungrateful for not trying to be more likeable, especially for a charity case, but he's not very good at it.

It doesn't matter. Because by tomorrow, the tomatoes will be dead again.

**Author's Note:**

> like I said, I am projecting onto Jonathan Sims like my life depends on it.
> 
> let me know if I missed any triggers
> 
> title from guiltless by dodie


End file.
